Coppicing
Volunteering
Living Woodlands
Dawn Fielding introduces a partnership between
woodland owners, coppice workers and volunteers
S
The nocturnal dormouse is one
of the beneficiaries of woodland
management and re-introduction
of coppicing
urrey is well known as a London commuter
belt but surprisingly it is also the most
wooded county in the UK. Throughout
Britain we have witnessed a decline in the
economic value of managed woodland over the last
100 years, leading to neglect and a gradual change
to dense forest. The Living Woodland Project aims
to reverse this decline, supporting efforts to restore
woodlands by reintroducing coppicing. The project
is helping to bring woodlands back into good
management, whilst showing the public why it is
necessary to selectively fell trees. There is a lot of
work to be done. People have not seen woodlands
being worked and coppiced within their lifetime and
often take a negative view of tree felling.
England has more woodland today than 20 years
ago, and yet woodland birds, butterflies and plants
are disappearing. A Plantlife report, Forestry
Recommissioned 2011, outlined that woodland
birds are in decline and are at their lowest levels
since 1970. Woodlands are also an important home
for 41 of our 55 species of butterflies and the main
habitat for 16 but there has been a 56% decrease in
woodland butterflies since 1990. One in six of our
woodland flowers has been threatened with
extinction over the past 20 years.
Coppicing
A volunteer tea break (below),
otherwise known as biscuit time.
Access improvements and
sweet chestnut fencing improve
a Living Woodland (below right)
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March/April 2013
Woodlands throughout England were traditionally
coppiced. It is an ancient system of woodland
management more than 3000 years old. As most
Living Woods readers will know, a tree is felled and
useful products are created from the shoots that
re-grow from the original stump. The main trees are
hazel, oak, ash, sweet chestnut and hornbeam.
Early man, having made clearings in the forest for
grazing animals during the Neolithic period, used
this natural re-growth for fencing, building, tool
handles and firewood. Coppice woodlands are still
harvested for these products today, by established
coppice workers and also a new generation
woodsmen. Standard trees, often oak, are also a
feature of coppice woodland and provide timber for
building large structures and in the past,
shipbuilding. As a general rule, no more than 15
large standards should be left per hectare within a
coppice area as too many standards reduce the
amount of light reaching the ground and the
coppice will not re-grow successfully.
Coppicing is our woodland heritage and its
future. The coppice cycle (ie. cutting a woodland
‘crop’ on a rotation) has enormous benefits for
wildlife. The huge increase in the amount of light on
the woodland floor (particularly in the year or two
after it is first cut) promotes the growth of ancient
woodland indicators, including grasses such as the
graceful wood mellick and flowers such as the
native bluebell and wood anemone. Pollen records
show that the bluebell (along with other woodland
flowers) only really became prominent in the fossil
record after coppicing became established.
There are three main reasons why coppice is so
good for wildlife. It supports a wide range of different
habitats and the continual management over
centuries has allowed many species to adapt
alongside the system. It also maintains a close link
with the original ancient wildwood by the way it is
made up of a semi-natural distribution of trees,
shrubs and plants as well as fungi and soils.
The loss of wildlife is understandably linked to the
reduction of coppicing in the last century. For more
than 3000 years a whole range of species of plant,
insect and animal have adapted to the continual
cycle of clearance and re-growth that results from
www.living-woods.com
coppicing woodland. People love trees but an
English woodland is so much more than trees. To
thrive, woodland wildlife needs open spaces with
coppices, rides and glades. We need to restore
these lost areas and let in both sunlight and life.
Several species of butterfly (pearl bordered and
small pearl bordered fritillaries) depend heavily on
the woodland clearings that result from coppicing.
The caterpillars from these two species feed on the
violets that thrive in woodland clearings.
Plants such as primrose, several orchids, yellow
archangel, woodruff, wood anemone and many
others thrive under coppice management. Many of
these species are so associated with coppice
woodlands that they will only grow where coppice
woodland is present. A lot of once-common plants
and insects are now uncommon or rare, both locally
and across the whole of southern England. In north
Surrey, some of the survivors include primrose,
tutsan, wild strawberry, dog violet, early purple
orchid and silver washed fritillary butterflies. These
species depend upon the periodically open, sunlit
conditions, which go hand in hand with coppicing.
Woodland initiative
Living Woodlands was launched in 2007, and
developed by the Lower Mole Countryside
Management Project. The ‘Moles’ carry out
countryside improvements for the benefit of people
and wildlife in the urban fringe of north Surrey and
Kingston. This includes landscape enhancements,
pond restoration and access re-surfacing. Much of
what they do is dependent upon their large and
enthusiastic volunteer group. Over the last 25 years
they found their volunteers loved working in
woodlands, restoring the hazel coppice for nature
conservation and public access needs. Yet they had
www.living-woods.com
to return every seven years to re-cut restored areas,
effectively keeping them from working on new sites!
There is only so much impact volunteers can have,
on the most wooded county in England. So Living
Woodlands was developed in order to help
self-employed coppice workers make a living
managing the newly-restored coppice, in a business
which has high costs and low returns.
The aim of Living Woodlands is to create lasting
woodland management with enormous benefits for
nature conservation, as well as improving access to
woodlands for local people and creating a better
understanding of why we need to manage them.
We create new coppiced woodlands under
long-term management by creating a partnership
between the project, self-employed coppice
workers and land owners/local authorities.
Matching sites with coppice workers, staff make
the initial negotiations with owners of woodland sites
Timber extraction the oldfashioned way with cant hooks
(above, far left). Volunteers
surfacing a woodland path
(above, centre). Restoring
woodland to coppice (top) and
securing a timber storage area
(above)
The Coppice Craft stall at the
Living Woodlands Fayre (below)
March/April 2013
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Volunteering
Community Woodlands
How to make it work
Bringing volunteers and workers together
L
A silver-washed fritillary
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March/April 2013
in private or public ownership. Having a coppice
worker in a woodland for several years encourages
regular work in scale with the size of the typical
Surrey small woodland. The alternatives are
occasional large-scale, high-disruption forestry
operations (which are often seen by local people as
‘catastrophes’) or continued neglect leading to
continued loss of biodiversity. We aim for a 14-year
agreement between owner and coppice worker, for
two full rotations of hazel coppice; seven years of
restoration and seven years taking of the restored
crop as a return for the risk and initial hard work.
We aim to match products with local markets.
Sales of high-quality, locally-produced items from
sustainably-managed coppiced woodlands are
being developed under the Living Woodlands brand.
Products include traditionally-crafted items such as
hazel hurdles, hedging products, besoms,
beanpoles and charcoal. By-products from
woodland management, such as woodfuel and
blanks for woodturning are also available. We sell
products through local garden centres, corner
shops and from our offices at Horton Country Park,
and are always looking for more outlets.
We assist with grant aid. Coppice workers apply
for Forestry Commission Woodland Improvement
Grants (WIG) aimed at restoring coppice. FC
payments and owners’ matched contributions go to
the coppice worker who undertakes the work. Other
income for the coppice worker is derived from local
sales of the products listed above.
The Project can provide in-kind practical
expertise, ranging from woodland wildlife surveys to
installing access gates and removing flytipping. We
can carry out local consultation, help with ordering
bulk materials (eg. Tenax for temporary deer fencing)
and apply for local grant aid to top up and add value
to Forestry Commission grants. We can turn
problems on one site to solutions on others.
Our skilled and trained volunteers can help with
invasive species control, access improvements,
ecological monitoring and nature conservation
management where the work provides no financial
return. It is interesting and diverse work! They are
helping to resurface paths, enabling coppice
workers to access the felled timber. They are
planting new trees and installing deer fencing,
keeping the new growth safe from nibbling. Hazel
that is left out of a coppice cycle rapidly becomes
derelict and can be very costly to clear cut and
restore back into cycle. Our volunteers are
invaluable, as they can carry out that first
uneconomic cut of the neglected woodland at low
cost to the landowner.
Benefits
The landowner’s woodland has an improved
standing crop along with nature conservation
improvements. Owners’ duty-of-care issues are
solved, plus with improved monitoring (coppice
workers are additional ‘eyes on site’) and site
security. Looking further ahead there is the
possibility of sales of coppice as a standing crop.
The Project and its sponsors help re-make the link
between the urban/suburban majority of the UK
population and a living, working, biodiverse and
productive countryside. We also aim to achieve
better physical and intellectual access to woodlands
for local people.
In 2012 the Project was awarded a grant of
£46,900 by the Heritage Lottery to fund a Living
Woodlands Project Officer for one year, to continue
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the expansion of this scheme. There are seven
woodlands currently under the scheme but we are
also involved in many more within our area.
Recent promotion of the scheme has seen a
higher web profile, new interpretation panels, leaflets
and banners along with a Living Woodlands Fayre
held in October 2012 with greenwood crafts,
bushcrafts and children’s entertainment. It was a
great opportunity to reach a new audience. We also
invited 60 school children along to watch two large
oak trees being felled and to learn about how it will
benefit the woodland wildlife. They donned Bob the
Builder hats and found it immensely exciting. Each
child planted an acorn in a pot to take home to
complete the ‘cycle’.
We are expanding the volunteers’ outlook on
woodland management. Many attended a butterfly
training day and as a direct result we now have a
number of volunteers carrying out surveys four times
a year on the Living Woodland sites. They also
attended a woodturning demonstration, with
beautiful pots and cups created out of wood offcuts.
The volunteers get the satisfaction of their work
making possible something much bigger and
longer-lasting than they could achieve alone.
Living Woodlands has proved a successful
template for managing woodlands, and the Lower
Mole Project plans to expand the initiative and bring
further woodlands under management in the future.
The beauty of the Living Woodlands project is that it
could be adapted anywhere in the country where
you have access to volunteers.
The Living Woodlands Project
is restoring woodlands across
North Surrey and Kingston
In coppiced woodlands, trees
such as Hazel, Ash and Lime
are cut back regularly to
near ground level. This
makes them produce
many shoots or “stools”
from the old stumps.
Coppiced woodlands
provide a greater variety
of food and shelter for
our woodland birds.
Dormouse © Hugh Clarke
Dormice are small, nocturnal and live
in the shrub layer and tree canopy.
Without action we could see the loss of
dormice from Surrey within 50 years.
Coppiced wood provides local, sustainable,
good quality products such as fencing,
garden products, firewood and charcoal.
*Woodland birds have
declined by 20% since 1970.
Chiffchaff - © Chris Ward
England today has more woodland
than 20 years ago yet woodland birds,
butterflies and plants are disappearing.
This has been linked to the reduction of
coppicing in the last century. Too many
woodlands are neglected or
under-managed.
Woodlands are an important home for
41 of our 55 species of butterflies and
the main habitat for 16 of them. They
rely on the low-growing vegetation
found in open woodland habitats.
Look out for woodland butterflies in
the summer months.
*The UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme shows
a 56% decrease in woodland butterflies
since 1990.
White Admiral - © Sherie New
Hazel stool in
its first summer
after coppicing.
Hazel stool 7 years
later. It is now
ready to be
coppiced again.
Hazel stool after 3 years.
What is Coppicing?
Woodlands throughout England were
traditionally coppiced. It is an ancient
system of woodland management over
3000 years old. A tree is felled and useful
products are created from the shoots that
re-grow from the original stump. Coppicing
is our woodland heritage and its future.
Scan the barcode using
your QR Reader App for
more information on
Living Woodlands.
By coppicing sections of the woodland
we allow more sunlight to reach the
ground, increasing the variety of plants
that grow here. This in turn attracts
more woodland wildlife, including birds
and butterflies that might otherwise
disappear from within Surrey.
*Source: Plantlife Report - Forestry Recommissioned 2011
Hazel coppicing (above). School children
experience woodland management in
action (top right) and a volunteer splitting
logs (right), with sales contributing to
conservation. Scrub clearance (far right)
adjacent to a coppice cant
iving Woodlands has begun in
earnest at Nonsuch Park all thanks
to John Armitage, the coppice
worker, and the Nonsuch Vole volunteer
group who have been working hard to
make the site a success. The woodland
at Nonsuch has not been managed over
the last 30 odd years. John and the
volunteers have so far thinned out one
small area of woodland and replanted the
space with young hazel trees. A further
area is to be coppiced this winter. A
nearby shed has been leased for storage
and they have fenced the perimeter with
timber sourced and processed all within
the park. It’s as ‘local’ as it gets.
An application will be made to the
Forestry Commission for a Woodland
Improvement Grant that should provide
Driving in deer fence stakes (above)
money for tree planting, thinning,
interpretation boards and footpath
improvements. Trees of conservation
interest will be left untouched. The felled timber will probably be made into high
quality benches and display boards and for use in greenwood crafts. There is a
woodturner group in nearby Cheam that use Nonsuch Wood to make attractive
bowls and cups. Some of the wood is suitable for firewood, to be sold from the site to
help raise money to support the coppice worker.
Moor Lane Allotment Conservation Area, Chessington is our smallest Living
Woodland. With the help of our volunteers we have installed Sussex-style fencing
along the boundary of the site. The sweet chestnut fencing has all been sourced
within Surrey from sustainable coppiced trees, which will re-grow and can be
harvested again in future years. The hazel trees on the site can be coppiced in the
coming years and used by the allotment holders as free pea sticks or bean sticks.
It should be fairly simple to set up a similar scheme in other parts of the country
where there are coppice workers/small scale woodsmen and volunteers. It does
require somebody to bring the groups together, but many counties have woodland
officers or countryside officers who might be able to assist and mediate between the
two groups. You need to think about insurance and tools.
Wood Anemone © Mike Taylor
Coppiced woodlands are valued
for their displays of spring flowers.
Most woodland flowers are not
shade tolerant and prefer the
lighter conditions found here.
*One in six woodland flowers is threatened
with extinction since 1990.
A Lower Mole Countryside Management Project
www.livingwoodlands.org.uk
Tel: 01372 743783
Details For more information contact Dawn Fielding
on 01372 743783 or email mole.project@surreycc.
gov.uk or visit livingwoodlands.org.uk.
www.living-woods.com
March/April 2013
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